


Falling Water

by T Verano (t_verano)



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Angst, Community: sentinel_thurs, Gen, SenToo angst, Sentinel Thursday, missing scene SenToo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-09
Updated: 2011-02-09
Packaged: 2020-03-13 08:08:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18936877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t_verano/pseuds/T%20Verano
Summary: Post-fountain reaction scene.





	Falling Water

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sentinel Thursday challenge 372 'water'
> 
> (This was originally titled "Waterfall" on the Sentinel Thursday comm. I changed it here in case I ever actually finish another, longer, unrelated fic that might very well want to be titled "Waterfall" itself.)

He strips off his clothes in the hallway and lets them fall to the floor. Stares at them. They're not damp anymore, but they smell like the hospital. Like grass crushed underneath his knees. Like chlorine.

Like —

_No. Don't go there._

He kicks the clothes towards the end of the hall, away from the bathroom door. Goes into the bathroom, steps into the tub and turns the water on full blast, locking everything away in his thoughts, like he's supposed to — like he's been trained to. When there's a job to do, a mission to perform, you can't afford to let anything distract you. You can't let anything weaken you. Even when it's the worst mistake you've ever made.

The worst fucking mistake you've ever —

_Don't go there._ After all, it's a mistake he's been given a reprieve for.

Why, he doesn't know. 

The water feels good, clean and hot, clearing his head as it pounds against his body, sluicing off everything; sluicing off the scent of terror, of guilt, of grief. Of hospital disinfectants and grass and chlorine —

Chlorine. He shouldn't be able to smell it any longer but he can. He can smell it everywhere. On his skin. Hanging in the steamy air around him. Coating the wet tiles of the shower wall.

No. Impossible. He's washed everything off; he's clean now — reprieved. He can't still be smelling —

_Chlorine._ The sharp heaviness of it envelops him, invades him. It fills his sense of smell, his taste buds, the air in his lungs. He gags.

He gags again. And again, helplessly, and again; leaning against the tiles until his legs refuse to hold him any longer and he ends up on his knees, gagging, under the unrelenting rain of chlorine-saturated water.

But he doesn't move to shut the water off. He doesn't move even when the scent of chlorine finally starts to fade — going back to its normal place in the scheme of a shower, point two parts per million, disinfecting Cascade's tap water to safeguard her citizens — and the water starts to run cold. After all, the water hitting him isn't yet as cold as the water Blair was floating in.

No matter how long he stays here, shivering under the run-cold water, he won't be as cold as Blair was.

Blair was wrong, he thinks, fucking _wrong_. The water isn't nice at all.


End file.
